Hey Reader!
Today we're discussing a list that I got excited about when I heard Rise of Angmar was going to include it, and that I really, really want to love because it has one of my favorite heroes in the game in it, and he's the centerpiece of what they do. So before we start the semi-hate-fest that this post is going to be (because man this list is really constrained, and hard to make work, and I say this as someone who has put in the reps with it all edition so far and boy has this been hard), I just want to say upfront:
I like Buhrdur, and I want him to succeed.
So everything I say next should be taken in the spirit of constructive criticism and finding ways to make tasty lemonade, because I really do want to see this army list work! But as it is, it has a lot of limitations, few answers to common problems, and relies on a whole lot of luck to bring in the wins.
Buhrdur's Horde: Changes for 2025
Profile Selection
The list of models in this army list hasn't changed from the previous edition: it's representative of the orcs and terrifying creatures common in the Third Age in the forests of Rhudaur and the mountains near Imladris, and is an Angmar army that has no undead in it (which is pretty unique, but also pretty cool). With a mix of orcs, wargs, and trolls, at the very least, you do have access to fast models, which not every army does.
But several of the profiles got reworked, and so while we will talk about those in turn below, suffice it to say for now, 1) Buhrdur got a much-needed glow-up, since he's the backbone of this list and they needed some added punch, and 2) the fact that the warrior choices in this book are basically untouched from last edition, but other rank-and-file infantry got increased Fight Value and special rules without a commesurate increase in cost, just know that while "a rising tide lifts all boats," this boat did not rise, :P
Army List Bonuses
There are three army bonuses tied to this list, all of which are useful. The first is Ambush, which is 99% the same from last edition, with one tiny tweak which makes it near-infinitely better: Buhrdur's warband used to be required to ambush, but now it may ambush, meaning that if it would be advantageous for you to start him on the board early and wrack up kills in a scenario, you can do that (where previously he would have been forced to move onto the board no earlier than Turn 3, and not been able to charge anyone until Turn 4).
Ambush allows Buhrdur's warband to be held in reserve, and not enter the board until Turn 3, and it can enter the board in one of two ways: you either pick a board edge to enter from (great for getting to far-flung objectives, outflanking a battle line, or dropping in on pesky archers and siege weapons that thought they were safe on the periphery), or they can all be deployed in or in base contact with a terrain feature that could reasonably hide them (so maybe not a hay bale, but rocks, forests, houses, ruins - that sort of thing).
This does come with a limitation, though: the larger his warband is, the less terrain features his warband can use, so this is one of those situations where, even if he has a lot of slots left in his warband, you may not want to take more than 7-8 warriors in his warband, just to insure that you have a lot of choices for where you deploy. Since you can't deploy a unit within 1" of an enemy, and they have to all either fit in or in base contact with that terrain feature, there are a lot of ways to keep you from being able to deploy in a given spot if the warband is too big. So things to think about; I'd keep it under 10 models.
Second, friendly models gain Mountain Dweller and Woodland Creature. This makes your army far more able to exploit various kinds of terrain, both because you treat a lot of terrain as open ground instead of difficult terrain, but also because you can reroll failed Jump/Climb/Leap tests, which is nice. So Masters of Terrain is really useful for your Wild Wargs in chasing down enemies, great for trolls being able to move their full distance, and great for orc formations in being able to wash over everything instead of being bottlenecked in given places because they're afraid to move slower.
Third and finally, we have A Fearsome Foe, where Buhrdur gains Fearless if he slays an enemy hero. Note that he also becomes a 3" banner in his personal profile if he slays a hero, so you can get two birds with one stone by simply removing Merry in the Fellowship, Pippin in a Minas Tirith list, a random Ranger of the North in a Rangers list - any hero will do the job.
So all in all, small things, but they do add up to at least give you some utility.
Profile Adjustments
There have only been a few changes since the last edition for this list, most of which center around Buhrdur:
- Buhrdur the Troll is now 130pts, so a few points more than last edition, but he gained a LOT for that price increase, and it was well worth it. With F7 (+1), S7 (+1), D7 (+1) alone you've probably made up those points, but in addition he's now at 3 Will Points, and has a few useful special rule changes as well that have amped up the power curve for him. First, he's Dominant (4), which is not surprising considering all monsters picked up this keyword, but it's nice to have. Second, he becomes a banner for the rest of the game if he slays at least one hero or monster (used to be a one-turn 6" banner if you killed the general), and if he slays 3+ heroes and/or monsters he becomes a 6" banner. Which is WAY easier than it used to be. He also has the Brutish Cunning special rule like the hill trolls now innate in his profile, so you don't need to take a hill troll to give him that rule.
- Angmar Orc Shamans also got an adjustment, having the ability to cast Instill Fear, Drain Courage, and Wither on a 3/4/4+ respectively. This is not a great set of spells (especially since you don't do Terror like old school Angmar did), but Wither is I think Wither is a diamond in a very rough patch of orc, because throwing this as a channeled spell on a big hero to make sure they're wounding less often is not a bad shout. It's not great - I'd much rather have had a Barrow Wight option in the list, but if you're looking for shenanigans, this is the closest you're going to get.
- Angmar Orc Captains cannot take a warg. Yeah, that's a change. Yes, it sucks. No, I don't think we're getting an errata. I'm sorry.
- Hill Trolls picked up Dominant (3), which is not surprising, but are otherwise exactly as they were last edition (not surprising considering the timing of the Rise of Angmar book release).
Otherwise no changes: Wild Wargs, Warg Riders, and Angmar Orcs are exactly what we remember, other than the obvious fact that you are limited in equipment combos, so no more shields on bannermen (which bites), no more shields on spearmen (which bites), no more 5pt orcs with no upgrades...lots of things, but all the same style of profile as we knew before.
Buhrdur's Horde: Strengths and Weaknesses
To its credit, this list does "Monster Mash" pretty well - with access to cheap monsters that are still F6 S6 D6 for only 75pts, and those monsters come stock-standard with a duel reroll against infantry (so 2 rerolls if in range of a banner on 3 Attacks), they can chomp through basic infantry and low-level non-Strike heroes very easily. And while F6 isn't great against heroes with Heroic Strike, if you face a lot of F5 heroes with Strike, there's actually a reasonable chance that they won't out-Fight you thanks to the reduction of Strike to a +D3 Fight Value instead of the old +D6.
The biggest weakness of this list is, in my mind, its Courage. With the overwhelming number of models in this list having a Courage of 7+ or 8+, Terror armies are going to butcher your men, break tests are always bad, and even if you have heroes to call Stand Fast, a lot of those heroes start on a 6+ or 7+, so even if there's no Harbinger of Evil, there's a reasonable chance that even Buhrdur will run (unless he hasn't had to use his Will Points, or if he's able to kill a hero and get Fearless).
On the positive side, you have reasonable mobility: I assume that "Friendly Models" in Masters of Terrain means that the Angmar Warg Rider has the special rules, and not necessarily the wargs, so I assume they don't gain the benefits of it (though I would love to be wrong!), but the fact that your Wild Wargs, trolls, and orc infantry can maneuver quickly through anything that isn't water, lava, or deep chasms is really nice. So unlike Shire/Dale armies, this one at least doesn't care about playing on boards with large amounts of difficult terrain, and can get where they need to go with relative impunity.
But there are other problems here. Resilience is a serious problem: the overwhelming majority of the list is D4-5, with only the trolls and the orc captains excepted, so heavy shooting, losing fights in close combat, and power heroes are going to chop through this army. And while you have a lot of 6-7pt model options between orcs and wargs, you don't do numbers like Shire and Moria armies do, for example, and even they can tear their way through this army.
You'll also find that magic presents a problem: your magic defense in this list is very weak, with Buhrdur leading the group at 3 Will Points (no access to Resistant to Magic anywhere), the Wild Warg Chieftain following up with 2, and the Angmar Orc Captain sporting the typical 1.
And while yes, the shaman technically has 3, you're casting spells with him, so he won't actually have 3 (and if he does use them for defense, you're not going to get much value out of him). So watch out for area spells, especially the kind that, oh I don't know, hand out Terror to friendly models, making your Courage Test across their entire front line, because those spells SUUUUUUUCKKKKKK...
We're not done yet! This list also struggles with shooting: typically lightly armored armies like Shire/Harad/Dale/Ranger armies deal with their generally lower Fight Value (Rangers and Dale have decent Fight Values - and I think the Ranger Fight Value should be higher than it is, but let's not get into that discussion today) is they have good shooting to winnow down enemy forces before they close.
So of course, you'd have orcs (5+ Shoot, unless you move, then it's 6+ Shoot) and trolls lobbing rocks (an EXCEPTIONAL 4+ SHOOT WITH A S8 HIT, TOTALLY OP YOU SHOULD USE THIS ALL THE TIME), so you're either using massed amounts of utter trash to shoot (which isn't reliable), or you're relying on 3-4 rocks, hitting 1-2 times, and admittedly probably removing 1-2 models. But that's not going to winnow down too many models, considering you have a range of 12" on those rocks, so none of it is that effective.
The list also suffers from low Fight Value, with the overwhelming majority of the list being F3 (all of your non-monster warrior options, in a world where most armies have a rank-and-file F4 option now, if not a F5 option), access to a single F4 hero (who is a humble captain), and a small squad of expensive heroes and monstrous infantry that are, admittedly, F5-7.
But with only Buhrdur getting access to Heroic Strike, this means that if you hit a hero-heavy army, or an elf army in general, you're in trouble, because you're not only relying on duels to do your damage (because your archery is bad, and you have no damage-based magic spells), you're then having to win those fights (which is an uphill battle), and then you have to wound (with most of your forces being S3-4, so looking for 5s or 6s against most models in the game, so you're not wounding in all of the ones you win).
So all that to say, they are quite mobile, and you can run tons of monsters, but let's pull no punches: it's hard to win with this army. It's not even the best non-undead Angmar army: arguably Ravagers of the Shire is better (more on that soon!), which is crazy. So if you take this list, you're fighting an uphill battle.
...And I should know because I've been playing with it, and what follows is some humble advice from someone who is trying his best to make lemonade out of the options available to us, :P
Buhrdur's Horde: Strategies for the Tabletop
First things first, let's talk about army composition: you need a balance of heroes and monsters compared to numbers. This seems normal: you need numbers to pad your break point, hold objectives, wrap around enemy lines, keep your critical pieces from being trapped, etc.
But my actual advice here is that you do need to take the monsters. If you rely on spamming orcs (on foot and/or on wargs), you are going to find out quickly that the F3 is a serious issue against most armies, and you're not actually going to remove a lot models, esepecially if they are combining shooting with close combat prowess (a Dale army is going to SHRED this list, let alone an elf army of any kind).
I recommend taking at least 2 hill trolls in addition to Buhrdur, and I almost always take a Wild Warg Chieftain, both because he has solid Strength for tearing through things, but also because with 3 Wounds and 1 Fate, he might even survive a botched roll.
With these in mind, your top choices for heroes are going to be Burduhr and the Wild Warg Chieftain (because they can reliably charge Terror models and remove models), though including at least one Angmar Orc Captain is advised if for no other reason than to call Heroic March to get you into combat sooner. Note that you can't take a warg for him, so he's foot slogging it, but most of the army is, so that's fine. Just know that he can't easily catapult Warg Riders 15" forward, because he can't move very far on his own and they'd need to stay within 6" of him.
In general I'd leave the Angmar Orc Shaman at home: Wither can be nice, but you're probably better off taking 7 Wild Wargs over and against 1 shaman. Just a thought.
Next, let's discuss battle line, because this is tricky. Yes, you can form battle lines, because you have infantry with shields and infantry with spears. But with a F3 S3 D5 frontline, the vast majority of armies are going to crush your forces if you line them up to fight.
So here's my recommendation: insert trolls every 4-5" on the frontline, so you're able to win fights and force either easier traps thanks to gaps in the line, or a shrinking frontage due to pulling troops in to fill gaps. Then shift spears around the edge to get traps, and use some of your shield guys to Shield to maximize your dice count.
You can supplement with cavalry and wargs, but those work better with a full wrap behind the lines, so push them as far around as possible, because those 40mm bases are so big, so on the flank you won't get many of them in.
On throwing stones: if you have Buhrdur + 3 hill trolls, and it's okay for them to stay put for a turn, on average you're getting 2 hits, which, when wounding on 3-4s (which is most models in the game), you're actually likely to score a wound. So you can plunk away at people in the battle line, or you can aim at a hero (at the very least you might remove the mount, which means your trolls will get their Brutish Cunning) and just do some grinding damage against them.
For speed and mobility you have 3 options: the Wild Warg Chieftain (who is not unique, so you can take multiples of these), warg riders (which count as cavalry), and wild wargs (who are cheap, but not as effective, but definitely get the army bonus special rules, which is nice). So thankfully you have a lot of choices! You can have trash all over the place! :P
But seriously though: remember that your cavalry are likely to lose fights because of that F3 (same for wild wargs), so unless you're rolling with a Wild Warg Chieftain, you're going to need a lot of them in one place to reliably win fights. And note that, should you run a Wild Warg Chieftain with Angmar Warg Riders, the warg riders don't have the "Warg" keyword, so they don't benefit from the Wild Warg Chieftain's heroic actions. Yeah, that's a thing, so just be mindful of that...
So with all of this in mind, let's look at what your army could look like.
Sample Lists
To start off, we'll take a look at a 500pt "Budget" list for Burduhr's Horde, focusing on numbers with enough chompy bits to carry the day (because with predominant F3 D4-5, we're going to lose a lot of models, so we need to have enough to buy time for the other elements of the list to crush through the enemy lines):
This gives us 30 models (which is good for 500), a long frontline (10 orcs + 2 captains + 1 troll + Buhrdur), with 4 cavalry to wrap (and 12 spears, so extra wrapping as needed) and a banner for potential VPs and hopefully helping us win more duels. If we put roughly 1 troll (hero or warrior) between every 4 orcs, we're better off at breaking through.
Shooting will hurt this list; it always does. So consider moving up in smaller parts, and then reform into one big line when you're close to take advantage of cover. I also only believe in taking shields on warg riders because 1) D5 is better against archery generally than D4, and 2) your archery is likely hitting on 5-6s otherwise, so why bother with such small volume. But you can kit them out however you like.
Also you can drop an orc warrior for a Wild Warg if you want to spend the extra point; I don't think it makes a lot of difference personally.
At 650pts we're adding more chomp to the list:
We've only added 6 models, so the model count is low, but we need ways to deal with multiple big heroes while still cracking the lines. So we've swapped a captain for a Wild Warg Chieftain, added another troll, and we're now at 5 cavalry plus some faster wargs to throw toward objectives in Buhrdur's warband. You can swap them for warg riders from other warbands if desired.
This should still have a reasonable frontage, gives you 4 removal pieces (plus a captain), and have enough bodies and speed to wrap the enemy.
And as we look at 800pts, the army is not much bigger because we were basically maxed on warrior slots, so we'll need to add a fourth warband:
This only adds 6 more models, but 1) we have another troll, 2) we have more fast models, and 3) we actually have a lot of Might on the table, so calling Moves and Marches should be easier. There's not much more maximization we can do for points, but you know: we've got a reasonably long frontline, good wrapping tools, and 4 monsters + a warg hero (with a whole pack following him) in the mix, which is not bad.
Not great, but not bad.
Conclusion
I really love the theme of this list: it kind of feels like you stumbled on a fantasy bandit camp, and now the bandits are angry with you! It has a lot of gaps in its inventory, but the new troll sculpts are great, and I do love them.
Watching the stars,
Centaur
"We watch the skies for the great tides of evil or change that are sometimes marked there." ~ Firenze, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
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